12 Questions to Ask Before You Sign With Any Agency

Tradesfluence: Every marketing pitch to a trades business sounds the same after a while. More calls. More jobs. More five star reviews. You've heard it on the phone, you've seen it in the slide deck, and honestly it's all starting to blur together like one long sales call that never ends. So today I want to hand you something different. Not a pitch. A list of questions. The kind of questions that in about ten minutes tell you more about an agency than their whole hour long presentation ever will.

Tradesfluence: Here's the pattern we see over and over. Three months later they're staring at a report full of charts that don't mean anything to them. Or they try to leave and find out the agency owns their domain. Or business goes slow for a month and they can't get anyone to just pause the account for a bit. None of that has to happen to you. And the fix doesn't cost you a dime. It's just asking the right questions before you sign anything, not after. You don't need to be a marketing expert for this. You just need to know what a straight answer sounds like versus a dodge. Questions are what get you to the actual plan underneath it.

Tradesfluence: First question, and it's the one almost nobody asks. Who actually owns your website and your accounts. Ask who owns the domain. Who owns the Google Business Profile. Who owns the hosting. Who owns the content if you ever decide to leave. Here's why this matters. Some agencies build everything under their own accounts. But the second you part ways, you walk away with nothing. No website, no profile, no content. A straight answer sounds simple. You own your domain. You own your Google Business Profile. The content stays yours no matter what happens. If the person on the other end of the call gets vague, or suddenly wants to talk about something else, that's worth noticing.

Tradesfluence: Second thing, how long is the contract. You run a trades business. You know what a slow season looks like. You know what it's like when a truck breaks down or a guy quits without warning and your whole schedule gets turned upside down. A twelve month contract with no way out doesn't care about any of that. Month to month, or at least a short initial term with a real exit built in, gives you room to breathe when things get rough. Now, reporting. Ask to see a sample report before you sign, not after you're already paying. If what they hand you is a wall of charts and percentages with no plain language explanation of what actually got done that month, that's not useful to you. You're running calls between jobs, you don't have time to decode a spreadsheet full of numbers that don't connect to anything real. If they can't show you a sample report right there on the call, that tells you something too.

Tradesfluence: Here's one that catches a lot of owners off guard. Then your account gets handed off to a junior person you never actually talk to again. So ask directly, who is writing my service pages, who is managing my Google Business Profile, and does that person actually understand my trade. A locksmith does not get searched the same way a pressure washing company does. The content should not read the same either. Now let's talk reviews, because this one has real rules behind it. Review generation is a completely normal part of trades marketing. But how it's done matters. Google is clear on this. Incentivized reviews, meaning anything offered in exchange for leaving a review, are against their guidelines. So ask how the agency requests reviews and what that process actually looks like from the customer's side. A legitimate process makes it easy for a happy customer to leave a review. It does not pay anyone. It does not pressure anyone.

Tradesfluence: Before you sign anything, ask what happens the day you decide to cancel. Do you keep your website. Do you keep your content. Is there a notice period. Is there a fee. An agency that's actually confident in the work they do will give you a simple, specific answer without flinching. There are a handful of smaller questions worth working into the same conversation while you're at it. Ask to see an example of a service page they wrote for another business in your trade. Ask if there's a setup fee and whether it changes based on how long a contract you sign. None of these are trick questions. A good agency answers all of them without hesitation, because the answers just reflect how they actually operate day to day. It's not a mystery to them. It's just the job.

Tradesfluence: So here's the practical takeaway. Before your next call with any agency, trades focused or not, write these questions down. Who owns the website and the accounts. How long is the contract and what happens if I need to pause. What does a real report look like, and can I see a sample. Who is actually doing the work on my account. How are reviews handled. And what happens the day I decide to leave. Ten minutes of straight answers to those questions will tell you more than an hour of pitch deck ever will. Next time someone pitches you, you ask the questions instead of just nodding along.

Tradesfluence: That's really the whole episode. Ask good questions, expect straight answers, and don't sign anything that makes you nervous to ask about the exit. If you want to run through this yourself before your next call, or if you're just tired of managing this stuff on top of running jobs every day, grab our free guide on how to choose a marketing agency for your trades business. Or just call or WhatsApp us at four one nine, five zero zero, four eight eight two and we'll talk it through like real people. Thanks for spending this time with us on The Booked Solid Podcast. Get back out there and go build something solid. Before you go, if you want help putting this into practice for your own trades business, grab our free guide on how to choose a marketing agency for a trades business, take a look at our plans on the pricing page on our website, or call or WhatsApp our team at four one nine, five zero zero, four eight eight two. We'll put the links in the show notes.